


Untitled Valhalla Rising AU

by RosemarysBabysitter (TashaElizabeth)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Valhalla Rising AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:24:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1599779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TashaElizabeth/pseuds/RosemarysBabysitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to a kink meme request for a modern day Valhalla Rising AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled Valhalla Rising AU

It is hot in here. The thick concrete walls are lined with pipes and the audience standing room is crushed gravel and other dilapidated subflooring. The heat is coming from the middle of the room, from the the hot flood lights pointed there and from the shining metal bars lining the ring. The smell of blood rises thick and nauseating from there.

Will had been warned not to use personal details and forbidden to take notes. He has his senses wide open, struggling to take in and remember every fact and feature of this place. He periodically traces a specific word, phrase, or number into the outside of seam of his jeans hoping the touch will help him remember it later. It is all men, no trophy girlfriends or prostitutes as he expected from preliminary research into minor bloodsport gatherings. The place bristles with testosterone, industrial grunge and a surprising undercurrent of extreme wealth. The prices of the bets raise higher and higher as the night continues.

Will spent three months investigating before he could get anyone who knew anything to even properly admit that the place he is standing in existed. He networked, researched, ingratiated and cajoled himself a solid contact, who then spent three weeks getting him an invitation. This paper should be phenomenal. Will’s willing to throw it all away in thirty seconds when they bring out the last fighter.

This man is not dazed, drugged, or disassociated; this man is real and vivid and throbbing in the forefront of Will’s mind. He is tall, muscled, severely handsome, and as he enters the ring and the flood lights glare into the backs of his eyes he looks straight at Will with a calm, rational assurance.

This man’s eyes look into him and numb him from the inside out. For a long, blissful moment, Will can’t even think. Then his thoughts begin at a doubled pace which churns into his bloodstream like nausea.

There isn’t much talking here. They play a vicious, relentless kind of death metal at very high bass which rattles at the corners of Will’s skull and has to be consciously ignored. Even the bets are placed largely through pantomime. Will’s finally in a world of happy social silence and all he wants to do is ask questions. His contact is a heavy set man with a thick beard named Sicko who keeps pointing at things and pounding on Will’s back in excitement and emphasis. Sicko is so smugly proud of his involvement in Will’s paper, so eager to explain that he is being "studied" as an example of" deviant ethical behavior", that Will is hesitant to ask him anything.

The fighter looks at Will again and he sees him. Will waves close Sicko as the opponents are paraded around the ring and hollers his question into Sicko’s ear as clearly as he can. Sicko grins in a a ain’t-I-cool sort of way and yells back that the fighter’s name is Fenrir, that Sicko has three thousand dollars riding on him, and that he’s undefeated. Will goes hot and cold in alternate waves. He doesn’t even care if its actually reference to some modern pop cultural ephemera he doesn’t understand; Will took comparative mythology and the name is right. The name is perfect. This is the wolf who devours the Allfather. This is the one who ends the world.

Will wraps his hands around the hot cage bars and watches the fight. It is short and brutal. Will has been watching recreational violence in a clinical manner for the past six months and this display before him roots down into his body and dizzies him. Fenrir kills with the same mindless competency of a man laying bricks. He kills to kill. Death is the purposeful and measurable outcome of his actions. They set three other men against him and the when the last one stops moving they have to pull Fenrir off him by a chain around his neck.

Someone throws a bucket of water at Fenrir’s face and the blood sluices down out of his mouth and spreads thinly over his bare chest and the tattered remains of the jeans he wears low on his hips. Will wants to put his hands there, to get the blood under his nails and trace the outlines of muscle and bones with his fingertips. The impulse fades slowly, like a lessening pain, and then Will turns to Sicko and yells that he needs to talk to that man’s owner.

Will’s paper isn’t on the fighters. Will isn’t supposed to be interested in the fighters, wasn’t even going to watch the fights. He’s jittery and overstrung. He’s eye contact is all wrong and he’s speaking too animatedly at this man, practically begging him for five minutes with his prize fighter before the ring packs up its warriors and its dead and disappears into the city night. It doesn’t matter. There isn’t a baseline to judge Will’s behavior against. There is nobody here whom he can offend.

The owner agrees, but there are rules.

“Don’t go up to the cage and don’t touch the cage. Don’t touch the chains either, if they’re sticking out of the cage. Don’t put your hands in the cage and for fucks sake don’t try to touch him. Don’t give him anything sharp or metal or longer than it is wide, actually don’t give him fucking anything and don’t try to take anything he gives you.” Fenrir’s owner rattles off demands and walks at a fast clip, keeping Will in a trot a step behind him. They weave down narrow hallways, dodging piles of rubble. The owner exchanges a satisfied look with Sicko before pulling open a doorway and shoving Will into the room beyond it. “And let me know if you get him to talk,” the owner finishes mockingly, “cause I sure the fuck never could.”

The door shuts against Will’s back.

After a moment his eyes adjust to the low light. On the other end of the room is a hastily assembled metal cage. Against the bare wall, Fenrir sits with his knees against his chest and a blanket thrown over his shoulders. The line of the chain at his neck reaches up high, through the ceiling of the cage to a hook above. A few links of it pool on the ground next to Fenrir, under the bloody thickness of his hand.

“God,” Will says.

The man glances up, sees Will, sees Will, and then rises solemnly to his feet. He drops the blanket down off his shoulders and walks forward. There is a palm print of blood smeared on the skin of his abdomen.

Will feels something heavy and sick in his stomach which he can’t identify. It morphs between fear and sex and something that might be awe. Then the man comes to the center of the cage and to the end of his choking collar. He stops abruptly with a wet, gagging sound and Will feels something he understands perfectly. It is an old and righteous rage that has driven Will to stupid lengths time and time again. It is the feeling he gets when he sees a sleek gorgeous dog tied up and starving in a witness’s backyard or finds the trail of a wounded buck limping along with misaimed bullet holes in its hide. It burns through him with a cooling fury and Will marches up to the cages and put his hands on the door and tries to pull it open. It refuses to budge.

Will takes a step back and puts his hands in his pockets. He shuffles through his belongings for the actuality of his wallet, seeking the touch of the cheap leather to remind himself he absolutely cannot afford to buy this man. Even if he could talk the owner into selling, which he knows he cannot, he cannot accumulate that amount of money before the ring will move on to some other city, some other warehouse, some other design.

Fenrir doesn’t speak but he looks at Will like he knows something Will doesn’t.

Some gum wrappers, a few coins, some misguided reference notes on small cards, his cell phone, the slick corner of his wallet and the round metal tube of a ballpoint pen.

It’s a very nice ballpoint pen in a geometric silver and black design and a sturdy, reassuring weight. Will thinks he picked it up off someone’s desk at work and forgot to put it back. It fits nicely in the curve behind his knuckles. Will takes it out his pocket and raises it up.

The man strains toward Will.

Will, very slowly, very carefully, turns his body sideways to fit his arm the maximum length he can manage between the bars. The man reaches out toward Will and their hands meet perfectly. Fenrir takes the pen from him, sliding his middle finger along the length of Will’s palm.

Fenrir nods at Will and secrets the pen into some pocket in his ragged clothing. Will pulls from the cage wall with a guilty pleasure thrumming through his hands. He smiles at Fenrir. Fenrir smiles back, slowly and knowingly. Will stops smiling. He steps back from the cage. A wave of panic spawns in him. It is a steady, relentless tide which Will cannot breath past or stomach down.

Will turns and leaves the room, leaves the building entirely.He finds his car on a side street and drives past his hotel all the long way back to Virginia. When he gets there he locks down every door and every window and sits up all night with the dogs all sleeping around him until the cool pink light of morning cracks over the night's black horizon.


End file.
